eight seconds left in overtime
by Faerie0975
Summary: "i'm pregnant." saying it was nothing like she had imagined it would be. she'd gone over this a thousand times in her mind, but never realized what an impact those two little words had. / au, all human, damon&jenna, jenna&alaric, damon&alaric friendship.
1. prologue

**PROLOGUE**** - -**

* * *

God, he really is beautiful, isn't he?

Jenna Michelle Sommers stares down the hall at a crowd of people gathered outside the doors to the cafeteria - or, namely, just one person. _Damon Salvatore._ She tries her very best not to be too obvious, but it doesn't matter, not really; practically every girl in sight has their eyes on him, too.

And why wouldn't they? He's _gorgeous,_ after all. Tall, dark, handsome, with piercing, ice-blue eyes and rock-hard abs that any girl would _kill_ to touch, just to graze their fingertips over -

"Earth to Jenna!"

Her best friend, Andie Star, waves her hand in front of Jenna's face. Blinking, Jenna turns to face the other girl - but not before shooting one last, longing look down the hallway of Mystic Falls High School.

"Admiring him again?" sighs Andie (like she can talk, she spends her entire fourth period concentrating on him instead of her English literature textbook).

Jenna reaches into her open locker for her chemistry textbook, tossing a quick glance at the clock. Less than a minute to the bell, and then she can go spend her entire fifth period doing exactly what Andie did all last class. Who needs to know how to balance chemical formulae, anyways? "Doesn't everyone?"

"Yes," grins her friend, leaning against the locker next to Jenna's. "Why wouldn't they?" Mischievously, she meets Jenna's blue eyes with her sparkling brown ones, running her fingers through her curls. "Too bad he's an _ass."_

Jenna casts another look towards the beauty of the twelfth grade. He's laughing, slamming his locker shut and heading for the chemistry lab. The bell rings; a loud, shrill sound that makes a boy down the hall jump, startled, and drop a heavy biology textbook on his foot. Jenna shuts her locker, turning back towards Andie again.

"But he's _ridiculously_ hot!"

* * *

"Do you want to go to the winter formal with me?"

Jenna looks up from her chemistry textbook, startled. _Crap, it's him._ "Wh-what?" she stammers. _Great._ Just great. She looks (_and _sounds) like a complete idiot. What if he takes it back?

(What if she didn't hear it properly? What if this is a dream?)

Damon Salvatore smiles down at her, his eyes shining under the fluorescent lights of the chemistry lab. "I said," he repeats slowly, "do you want to go to the winter formal with me?"

Okay, so she heard him the first time. Maybe she just wanted to hear him ask her again. His voice was all silky-smooth and pretty and it made her heart skip a beat -

"Me?" she asks, half-hoping he'd say it again, because it's a beautiful sound. He only nods. Well, that's good enough for her. _Damon Salvatore_ wants to go to the winter formal with _her!_ She doesn't care why. It doesn't matter. This is a dream come true, so Jenna just smiles and tries not to sound too eager. "Okay."

Only once he turns away does she allow herself to blush.

* * *

"Let me get this straight," says Jenna's older sister, Miranda, carefully wrapping a lock of Jenna's auburn hair around the curling iron. "The guy you've had a crush on for six _years_ asked you to go to the winter formal with him?"

"_Yes!"_ cries Jenna excitedly; the sudden exclamation causes her five-year-old niece, Elena, to nearly fall off her lap. She glances at the clock on her bedside table for the hundredth time. Forty-two minutes until the formal. "Isn't it _amazing?"_

Miranda laughs, placing one palm on her little sister's shoulder. "Stop bouncing," she orders, though the seriousness that she's clearly attempting to force into her words doesn't exactly shine through. "You'll ruin your hair."

* * *

She's dancing with _Damon Salvatore._

(Please don't let her wake up and this have all been a dream, a terrible, beautiful dream.)

Jenna wants to freeze time, to capture the moment so she can remember it forever. She wants to remember the jealous glares from every other girl in the room. She wants to remember his hands on her waist, his body only an inch and a half away from her own...

"Why did you ask _me_ to go with you?"

Immediately, she wishes she didn't ask. Everything was so _perfect,_ and now she'd ruined the moment, given him the opportunity to snatch away all that happiness and -

"Because I like you."

- everything was right again, it was all okay.

"I have for a while, actually," he adds, flashing his beautiful smile at her. It's strange; just those little words have drawn Jenna in like a moth to a flame. And, very suddenly, in front of everyone (add this to her list of things she wants to remember), Damon Salvatore leans down and presses his lips to hers.

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE | **_This is a rewrite/update of my story "Over My Head." I had literally no muse for continuing from the place that story had reached, so this is me trying again, and hopefully it'll work a little better. The prologue isn't all that different from the first version, but starting now, it'll progress a little differently._


	2. stuck in reverse

**ONE - -**

* * *

The automatic glass doors slide open with a light _whir,_ sweeping Jenna into the hospital along with a gust of morning air that was just a little too cold for April. It's strange, being back in Mystic Falls after so many (okay, twelve) years - but she'll freely admit that she hurried back to her (ex)home as fast as her feet and gas pedal could take her. The phone call was startling and unexpected and it left her with the jarring sensation that she'd just jumped off a bridge (fitting, wasn't it?) with a long bungee cord attached to her, and she'd come just a little too close to the rushing water below for comfort.

"Jenna."

He's stalking down the hall towards her, frowning, wearing dark clothes like he always has, and Jenna can hardly find it in herself to sigh before she answers coolly, "What are you doing here, Damon?"

It hurts that he doesn't look much different.

"Visiting Elena," he replies, as though it were the simplest answer in the world, like it makes sense to someone other than him. As far as she knows, he hasnÕt talked to any of her family for years. It's not like they liked him, anyways.

* * *

_"So, what's the plan?" asks Damon as they turn onto Jenna's street._

_Jenna's high-heeled boots click against the sidewalk as she allows a lengthy pause to insert itself into the conversation. "We don't have one," she says finally, "like in all those movies where they don't have a plan and everything works out perfectly." That's too much to hope for, but she holds up her right hand, the first two fingers crossed, for him to see._

_She tells her mother that he's her chemistry partner (maybe it's only a half-lie, since he's in her chemistry class, after all) and they need to work on a lab in the kitchen. Miranda and Grayson are laughing in the living room, sitting across from Jenna's father, who has a giggling Elena in his lap. She even looks like she could be related to them, not just to Mir and her husband, but to Kyle and Georgia Sommers. It's unnerving. She tries not to think about adoptions around Elena, as if there's a chance that the girl could be telepathic._

_They let her parents catch them kissing, even if it feels forced, as a gateway into a place where they can tell them what's happened, what a huge mistake they've made. Jenna isn't Miranda - Miranda is perfect and smart and beautiful and makes all the right choices, and Jenna's the screw-up. Soon, her father will be yelling, and she imagines the neighbours dropping whatever they're doing and listening intently to see if they can hear what Jenna the Screw-Up has done this time. _

_"What is this... this _boy_ doing here?" snaps her father in his regular booming tones (maybe a little deeper). "Jenna! I asked you a question." She looks around carefully, trying to decipher from the surrounding expressions what the correct answer is supposed to be. They've all filed into the kitchen, and she wishes that Miranda and Grayson could have taken Elena home so that she won't have to witness this. She stares at her father blankly and he repeats angrily, "What is _this boy_ doing _here?"_ Emphasis on the word 'boy,' like he's been planning to use a much different, far less appropriate word._

_"He has a name," Jenna mumbles, suddenly feeling very tired. "It's Damon. We... we have to tell you something."_

* * *

"Why?"

She snaps it, and he looks a little taken aback. Jenna's not in the mood to wait around for a half-maybe answer, though, and she raises one eyebrow slightly, impatiently, glancing past him like Elena's at the other end of the hallway, waiting for her (she's really on the third floor, sixth door on the left). Damon sighs. "I just wanted to check up on her. She's grown a lot, you know, since you left." There's a pause; Jenna doesn't say anything. "How's Jeremy?"

Jenna shrugs. "You know. He's grown a lot, too. Since... since I left." The words sound harsh, cruel, like it's all his fault that she left (okay, so it mostly is). She watches him as his gaze flits about as though he's looking for the eleven-year-old, and adds pointedly, "He's back in Atlanta. With Kate.

A strange expression passes over Damon's face, like maybe he's in pain. "Who's Kate?" It comes out the same way that everything she's said so far has, as though he's finally given up on trying to sound completely civil.

"Does it matter?"

"Yeah, it does."

Rolling her eyes, she pushes past him and heads away, footsteps echoing off the linoleum floors. "She's someone who will do a hell of a lot better at looking after him than you would, Damon," she calls over her shoulder.

* * *

_"Well?"_

_There's no going back now. They're all watching her, waiting, holding their breath - even Damon, who knows exactly what she's about to say. She's almost surprised that they don't have popcorn. If she reaches out, maybe she'll find that she's trapped inside a screen, like in all those cheesy movies where the characters end up caught in a movie of their own lives. Has that happened in enough movies for it to be a cliché? She's not sure. Nobody's saying anything, just waiting, and Jenna's eyes linger on each face as she struggles for the right words._

_"He's... my boyfriend." Still, nothing. They can deal with Jenna having a secret boyfriend, even if it's pretend. "He - he doesn't usually come over," she tries, grasping at straws, trying to get them a little invested in this, but it's useless. It's not that big of a stretch; she's done worse, and they all know it. "I thought you guys might go out..." Jenna picks at an imaginary speck of dirt caught under her fingernail, avoiding everyone's gazes. "Sometimes, when I say I'm going out with my friends, I'm... not. I'm going to meet him. I'm sorry." _

_God, she hates lying._

_Her mother seems to be the only one who can speak. "And?"_

_And? And, that's one word, can't she say just a little more? And, why do they have to know her so well, to know her well enough that they can tell that she has something else to say? And, maybe Jenna can pretend there isn't anything else to say, will that work? Miranda is wide-eyed, recognizing Damon from right before winter formal when Jenna pointed him out in last year's yearbook, clearly struggling with the idea of whether to be excited that Jenna's dating him or angry because their parents are. Grayson is crouched next to Elena, both their eyes flickering confusedly around the room. Her father is unreadable, blank, and she can't tell what he's thinking. Which, she knows, is a bad sign._

_"And," she says softly, weakly. Jenna swallows, trying to gather the courage to say the two words left in her confessions. She's already told Damon - that's one person, so she's on a roll, right? Shouldn't it be easy to say it again? When she speaks, it's in a whisper. And, emotionless. And, as quiet as she can possibly make it._

_"I'm pregnant."_

_And, I'm dead._

* * *

She finds the proper hospital room quickly; the door stands open, a little, and Jenna's fingers curl around the edge of the wood as she peeks into the room. Her eyes widen at the sight of her niece. She isn't sure what it was, exactly, that she's been expecting, but it's startling nonetheless. What, exactly, is a seventeen-year-old girl supposed to look like when she's been a passenger in a car that goes off of a _bridge_ and she's the lone survivor?

Whatever the proper way for Elena to look right now is, she just looks so _small_ wrapped up in hospital-white sheets, pen in hand, frown deep on her face as she writes at a painstakingly slow pace in her diary. Her cheek is bruised and her hair is pulled back in a low, loose ponytail that contradicts everything JennaÕs seen in every picture of her niece in her Mystic Falls High cheerleading uniform, and it's just so foreign to her that she can't help but just stare with wide eyes.

Elena looks up slowly as she steps into the room. "Hey." She offers Jenna a tiny smile, like everything's fine. Like she's not in the hospital.

"Oh, God, _Elena,"_ sighs Jenna, and crosses the room ever-so-carefully to sink down into the chair that's been pulled up next to the bed. She doesn't really know what to say, so she just settles for, "Uh. How are you... feeling?" Before Elena can answer, she shuts her eyes tight and carries on hurriedly, "I - don't answer that. That was lame. I'm sorry." She's not just sorry for the insensitive question; she's sorry for not coming to visit enough, she's sorry that Elena's in the hospital, she's sorry that _Damon,_ of all people, came to visit her, she's sorry that Miranda and Grayson are gone (and she's sorry for other things, too, of course, only she can't think of them right now).

The apology, however badly worded and insincere it sounds, seems to come across the way that it should have. Her niece gives her a weak smile and Jenna's worried that the movement is going to shatter the girl into a million jagged-edged pieces on the paper-white hospital sheets. "Well - you know," she says hesitantly. "I mean, I'm here, right? That's... that's good."

She sounds so absent, like she's only really half-_there._ Jenna's teeth dig into her lower lip. "I'm sorry about your - parents."

This seems to fall short, too, and a pause that shouldn't exist pushes itself into every corner of the room as she struggles for whatever she should say next. "I - I don't know if anyone told you, but I... I'm supposed to be your guardian now." It seems too soon to bring that up, but Elena doesn't comment on it. Jenna runs her fingers through her hair and examines her niece's face carefully, like maybe it'll give her a clue about whether to go on or to shut up. Elena's expression is unreadable and doesn't seem to want to give her any helpful advice, so she pushes on. "So Jeremy and I will be moving back here, I guess. Unless you want to come out to Atlanta, but all of your friends are here, right? And so I thought -"

"Jenna."

She cuts off abruptly, realizing that she's been rambling. The younger girl is looking at her carefully, shutting her diary and sliding it onto the table next to her bed. "It's fine. I'll... do whatever, I guess."

Hesitating, Jenna shrugs. The words come out haltingly and she tries not to think of Damon Salvatore's presence in Mystic Falls as she answers, "We'll move out here."

Elena's smile still looks broken.

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE | **_I totally thought that I was going to update so long before now. I just got so busy with exams and friend drama and graduation and everything, but now that school's over, I should have more time to update and everything. Also, it's my birthday today! The highlight is that I went out for breakfast with my family this morning and the waiter, James, got the whole restaurant to sing happy birthday to me. And the fact that I'm eighteen but I still got a colouring sheet. And full-on had a crayon fest on it. It was beautiful. :D  
_


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